Drug Law Leaves Trail Of Innocents

In 80% Of Seizures, No Charges

Thousands of ordinary Americans are being victimized each year by the federal seizure law, which was meant to curb drugs by causing financial hardship to dealers.

A 10-month study by The Pittsburgh Press shows that 80 percent of the people who lost property to the federal government were never charged with a crime. And most of the seized items weren`t the luxurious playthings of drug barons, but modest homes and simple cars and hard-earned savings.

Those goods generated $2 billion for the police departments that took them.

Said Eric Sterling, who helped write the law a decade ago as a lawyer on a congressional committee: ``The innocent-until-proven guilty concept is gone out the window.``

Under the government`s seizure law, police can seize cash and belongings if a person fits a vague description of a drug runner, which is heavily weighted against minorities; or if a person has cash tainted by drugs, which is true of almost all U.S. currency, or if someone has property used in the commission of a crime, even if that person was not involved in the crime.

To try to get it back, owners have to hire an attorney and sue the federal government. Cases usually takes months or years, and there`s no guarantee of success.

One man caught up in the seizure law is Willie Jones, a second-generation nursery man in his family`s Nashville business.

Not long ago, he bundled up money from last year`s profits and headed off to buy flowers and shrubs in Houston. He makes the trip twice a year using cash, which the small growers prefer.

But this time, as he waited at the American Airlines gate in Nashville Metro Airport, he was approached by two police officers who escorted him into a small office, searched him and seized the $9,600 he was carrying.

A ticket agent had alerted the officers that a large black man had paid for his ticket in bills. Because of the cash, and the fact that he fit a

``profile`` of what drug dealers supposedly look like, they believed he was buying or selling drugs.

He was free to go, he was told by the police at the airport. But they kept his money-his livelihood-and gave him a receipt.

No evidence of wrongdoing was ever produced, and no charges were filed. As far as anyone knows, Willie Jones neither uses drugs nor buys or sells them. He is a gardening contractor who bought an airplane ticket and lost his hard-earned money to the police.

In another case, a dozen deputies and tax agents walked into the Irwin, Idaho, home of Robert and Bonita Brewer last October with a search warrant. An informant had said Brewer ran a major marijuana operation.

They found eight marijuana plants in the basement under a grow light and a half-pound of marijuana. The Brewers were charged with two felony narcotics counts and two charges for failing to buy state tax stamps for the drugs.

Robert Brewer is 61 and his wife is 44. They`re both retired from the postal service. He is dying of prostate cancer and uses marijuana to ease the pain and nausea that comes from radiation treatments.

``I didn`t like the idea of the marijuana, but it was the only thing that controlled his pain,`` Bonita Brewer says.

The government seized the couple`s 5-year-old Ford van that allowed him to lie down during his twice-a-month trips for cancer treatment at a Salt Lake City hospital, 270 miles away.

Now they must go by car.

``That`s a long painful ride for him. . . . He needed that van, and the government took it,`` Mrs. Brewer says.

Rooted in English common law, forfeiture has surfaced just twice in the United States since colonial times.

In 1862, Congress permitted the president to seize estates of Confederate soldiers. Then, in 1970, it resurrected forfeiture for the civil war on drugs with the passage of racketeering laws that targeted the assets of convicted criminals.

In 1984, however, the nature of the law was radically changed to allow the government to take possessions without first charging, let alone convicting, the owner. That was done in an effort to make it easier to strike at the heart of the major drug dealers. Police knew that drug dealers consider prison time an inevitable cost of doing business and that it rarely deterred them.

Profits and playthings, however, are their passions. Losing them hurts.

And there was a bonus in the law: The proceeds would flow back to law enforcement to finance more investigations. It was to be the ultimate poetic justice, with criminals financing their own undoing.

Because money and property are at stake instead of life and liberty, the constitutional safeguards in criminal proceedings do not apply.

The result is that ``jury trials can be refused; illegal searches condoned; rules of evidence ignored,`` says Louisville defense lawyer Donald Heavrin. The ``frenzied quest for cash,`` he says, is ``destroying the judicial system.``